Union County courier. [volume] (Elk Point, Union County, D.T. [S.D.]) 187?-1913, 1887-02-02
The Reality or (lcnius.

49, - <st >AN ~
"to scorn delights and live laborious
days" It "can not else" The fire
must out or it will consume its inheritor.
Mr.. Churchill. in "Kavanagh," Just
misses being q genius, because he is not
driven to perform his work either at q
heat or by rational stages. The story
Of unconscious self-training ever repeats
itself; the childhood of Burns and
Keats and Mrs. Browning, Of James
Watt, has q method of finding the pre-
else nature suited to it. OF course i
poor soil, the absence of sunlight, will
starve the plant or warp it to some
morbid form. But how Hloriously it
thrives in its true habitat and ct its
proper season. Time and the man
have fitted each other 80 happily that
many ask-as Mr.. Howells asks con-
corning Grant, Bismarck, Columbus,
Darwin, Lincoln-who calls such an
one q genius? Often, too, as in the
cases Of at least two Of these men, the
c~oincidents are SO marked that the &C.
tors lose the sense of their own destiny,
and imagine themselves chiefly suited
to something quite otherwise from the
work to which the very stars of heaven
have impelled them But fair aptitude
with ceaseless industry and aspiration,
never can impose itself for genius upon
the world. II will produce Southeys
in q romantic period and Trollopes in q
realistic one. We see the genius of
Poe broken by lack Of will, and that OF
Emily Bronte clouded by q fatal bodily
disease; but, as against "Wuthering
Heights" with its passionate incom-
pleteness, Trollope's entire product
stands for nothing more than On extern
sive illustration of mechanical work
against that which reeks with individ-
uality, and when set against the work
of true genius reinforced by purpose,
physical strength, and opportunity, -
exhibited by Thackeray, or Hugo, OF
Dickens. comparison is simply ont of
Thought Not every mind catches fro
with its WI friction and emits flashes
that surprise itself. as in dreams one
Is startled 1t things said to him, though
he actually is both i~nterlocutor and n
swerer. Thus Swift, reading his "Tale
Of . Tub exclaims: "Good God!
what . genius / had when I wrote that
book" Thackeray confessed his de-
light with the passage where Mrs.
Crawley, for . moment, adores her
stupid husband after his heroic act.
There" cried the novelist, lis a stroke
Of genius!" Il wal one of the occasions
when, like our autocrat composing "The
Chambered Nautilus, he had written
"better than he could."-E. c. Sted-
man, In NesU Princeton ReuicW.
About Fair.
In a Montana court a suit involving
the title to six mining claims was sew
eral years ago decided by Judge w. in
some mysterious way by which he gave
four claims TO one side and two to tho
other. After the decision was an
nOunced an attorney in the case met
one Of the litigants, m honest old
Missourian, and asked him what he
thought Of it.
wall" he replied, II think Judge
w. did about the far thing. Yer see,
thar SOL four OF us an two O. them.
That would be . claim apiece. An the
Judge he gnv four claims to MS an two
to them, SO each man gifts . claim. I
don't see how he could ha' done much
fa'rer than that."
But the Judge never enjoyed being
joked about the peculiar legal principle
on which he had decided that case.-
Detroit Free Press.